The invention relates to a hinge for cabinet doors, with a door-related hinge part in the form of a cup which can be set in a mortise in the back of a door, and a carcass-related part in the form of an elongated supporting arm of an inverted U-shaped cross section. These parts are articulated together by two hinge links journaled at their extremities in the cup at their one end and on the supporting arm at their other end. Such a hinge also has a closing mechanism wherein a cam element is disposed in the sup- porting-arm end portion of the inner hinge link nearer the cabinet interior when the door is closed and is joined for corotation with the hinge link. On the cam surface of the cam element a resiliently flexible section of one leg of a substantially U-shaped leaf spring lies under bias while its second leg is joined by a bridging section to the end remote from the cup of the resiliently flexible leg and is supported in the supporting arm interior.
Such hinges have proven practical (German Federal Patent 24 08 057) and have been used for many years in great numbers for hanging doors on cabinets. The cam element in these known hinges is formed by two plastic cams fitted onto the opposite lateral margins of the carcass end of the inner hinge link provided with a rolled pivot eye. The resiliently flexible leg of the leaf spring which cooperates with the track of the cam element must on the one hand contact the cam with a certain bias, and on the other hand it must also be sufficiently strong to produce the desired closing characteristic. Consequently the leg and thus also the leaf spring must have a certain total length. This requires, however, that sufficient space be available in the interior of the supporting arm for the installation of the leaf spring. The known closing mechanism therefore is not easily applicable to hinges in which this space is restricted, because for example the adjusting screw serving to vary the overlap of the door on the front edge of the lateral wall of the cabinet carcass is provided in the front end portion of the supporting arm in order to keep the supporting arm particularly short overall. The case becomes especially critical when such a supporting arm is greatly offset, i.e., its front end toward the cup is at a relatively great distance from the inside surface of the corresponding carcass wall, since the said adjusting screw then has to be disposed in a trough-like indentation in the web of the supporting arm. The link end of this trough-like indentation then additionally diminishes the space available for the spring, to such an extent that the known closing mechanism can no longer be used.
It is the object of the invention, therefore, to improve the known hinge such that even in a case in which the space for the arrangement of the leaf spring in the supporting arm interior is limited, the hinge can be provided with a closing mechanism that will be just as functional and will be comparable as regards its manner of operation and its reliability.